Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp was liberated. In this camp alone, more than one million people were murdered, most of them Jews.
We listen to those who came before us… We preserve the memory of the Holocaust… We share those stories with those who come after.
Pope Leo XIV commemorated the Day saying that ‘…the Church remains faithful to the unwavering position of the Declaration Nostra Aetate against every form of antisemitism. The Church rejects any discrimination or harassment based on ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion.’
Nostra Aetate, means ‘In Our Time’. In October 1965, Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council emphasised the importance of interreligious dialogue and mutual respect between the Catholic Church and other religions,
The ‘Nostra Aetate’ declaration denounced anti-Semitism, calling for improved relations between Catholics and Jews. It marked a significant shift in the Church’s approach to other faiths, calling for greater understanding and respect.
Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs, a beautiful song from 1978 that pays tribute to the artist L.S. Lowry, was on the radio yesterday…
Lowry’s painted scenes that depict the harsh realities of industrial England, of bleak, landscapes with human figures, similar to stick figure drawings, that always seem poor, sad, anonymous…
Factory workers in the industrial North are far from my experience of life.
At our church home group last night, we talked about and prayed for, friends and family – a young woman confined to a wheel chair… an older, somewhat eccentric woman with problems… a man with dementia causing concern in a care home… a family grieving a recent bereavement… a woman undergoing surgery today following a serious road traffic accident.
Nostra Aetate – In Our Time – today… reflecting on the holocaust and Lowry’s matchstalk men… I remember those radically different from me… the sad, the suffering, the apparently insignificant. I seek to understand better, have deeper empathy… and stand with, stand for those who have no voice.
malcolmsmusings.org 